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Topic: [D&D 3.5] - Leadership (Read 1659 times)

I know a bunch of you play D&D and have even been DMs. Could you guys explain about how players can become a leader and run their own place? Specifically areas like Leadership feat and related classes like a "Marshal". Also about Followers, Cohorts and Hirelings. I have been researching myself through books such as the Stonghold Builder and the DMG II where they talk about followers.

In short I am looking more for first hand experience from either DMs who have had players do their in their games or players who have become leaders and/or have own their own bases. Thanks in advance!

Well this probably isn't the type of answer you're looking for but my advice would be don't play 3.5 ed.

It was an ok system at the time but even by the standards of its day it was highly flawed and there is much better stuff out there now. These flaws actually particularly manifest in the nature of the systems which handle abstracts like leadership, persuasion, etc etc.

I'd take a look at Pathfinder if I were you, I think there is a series of "Kingmaker" (I think that's the name) adventures which involve establishing and running a kingdom so that must have rules for follower management.

Haven't looked at DnD 5 at all so no idea if that has any new systems for this sort of thing.

Ultimately though the way I handle this sort of thing is to not actually use rules for it. It's an RPG, not a videogame so there doesn't have to be a system for everything. There certainly isn't any point in writing anything more than extremely generic stats or just a brief description of generic henchmen or mooks. Something along the lines of "can adequately perform tasks of manual labour, all things being equal will defeat an equal number of other mooks about 50% of the time in battle and will die or leave the fight immediately if they take any amount of damage from a hero". Just play it by ear.

Pff... 3.5 was not that great even at the time. It just that is was one of the popular system everyone could agree with to try. It gets messy quick.

Pathfinder is likely the best option out there. 5th edition is not that bad... But! it does have some quirks to it. It sometimes like to keep stuff a bit vague to let the GM decide. Which if you ask me is just dumb. But I have had fun with what little I have played with it. Far more to my liking then 4th edition.

But I would also like to know a bit why this focus on leadership. Maybe the D&D style games is not what your actually are looking for if you want to do the leadership thing. Humble Bundle I think still has a stale or RPG books. A bunch of them is Game of Thrones RPG so that could maybe be more leadership style? (I have not had a chance to read up on it yet.)

But there more games about being more of a leader. More social RPGs. After all D&D is in core about the Dungeon Crawl experience. (Especially 4th edition. So do not look to that. The others are more flexible.)

Well I have not played D&D in a long time. I learned D&D during 3.0 and 3.5 had just come out around the time I last played. I however have a lot of D&D books from the time and recently have been reading them again. This mainly was due to watching a YouTube channel about D&D and DMing. The leadership feat is something I was interested in doing back in the day but never tried. Thus I wanted to basically get to know these aspects of the game that I never actually got to do. In short a lot of what I have been doing is finally getting around to reading and learning stuff I kept putting off.

If you're starting off, I'd suggest going with 5e. They simplify a lot of mechanics, and incorporate some of the funner aspects of the old expanded systems right into the core classes. It doesn't have all the crazy awesome bull**** you can pull off in 3.5 or Pathfinder, but it does tend to move a lot more smoothly. It's a sleeker, faster tabletop.

Like a cheetah.

Having played a few games of it on both sides of the table, it's a blast, and new players have a much easier time getting a handle on things.

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